Who Should I Book to Speak at My Conference, and What Kind of Speaker Does the Day Actually Need

You have three hundred people in a hotel ballroom at half nine on a Tuesday, and a fair number of them would rather be at their desks. The agenda has a results presentation before you and a breakout after you, and somewhere in a spreadsheet there is a line called external speaker with a number beside it. That is the actual problem.

Match the speaker to the job the slot has to do, not to the theme on the poster. A conference needs one speaker who gives the day a spine, usually early. An after lunch slot needs energy and a story. A closing slot needs something people carry out the door. Booking one speaker to do all three is where most conference programmes go wrong.

The early slot decides whether people believe the day is worth their time. If your conference opens with the numbers and a strategy update, the external speaker afterwards is doing the job of making the strategy feel survivable for the people who have to deliver it. That is a resilience or leadership brief, and it wants somebody who will connect to what was just said rather than ignore it.

After lunch is a physical problem before it is a content problem. The room is full and slow. This is where a story with something at stake earns its keep, and it is where Enda O’Doherty does most of his work in Ireland, because a man carrying a washing machine up a mountain wakes people up whether they intended to be woken or not. What matters is that the story goes somewhere. A talk that is only remarkable is a nice hour.

The closing slot is the hardest and the one people underinvest in. Everybody is thinking about traffic. You want short, warm and genuinely final, and you want the speaker briefed on what the day said so they can tie it off rather than start something new.

A sales kickoff wants pace, a story with visible cost in it, and a link to performance under pressure rather than to wellbeing. Sales audiences are the most sceptical room in the country and they can tell within ninety seconds whether you have ever had a bad quarter. Book somebody who talks about failure specifically, not just achievement.

January is when most of these happen in Ireland, and the whole country is looking for the same fortnight in the same month. If you are reading this in autumn with a January kickoff in mind, that is the right time to be asking.

The thing sales teams respond to is the unglamorous part. Not the summit photograph. Day six of nine marathons in eight days, when the thing was going badly and continuing was a decision rather than a feeling. That translates directly into a sales floor in February and it needs no translation from me.

A wellbeing week wants a speaker who will not make your staff the problem. Half the audience chose to be there and half were told to attend, and the second half decide whether the week succeeded. The talk has to be warm, honest about what the organisation controls, and it has to signpost properly.

This is the slot I am asked about most often and the one with the most ways to go wrong. If a speaker stands up and tells a room whose workload is genuinely unmanageable that the answer is a better attitude, you will hear about it for months. CIPD Ireland’s May 2026 survey found mental health is the leading cause of absence in 51% of Irish organisations, which is not a problem any individual in your audience created on their own.

There is also a duty of care question that needs answering before you book rather than after. If somebody in that room is currently grieving, or drinking too much, or was bereaved by suicide, what is the plan. Any speaker working with this material should be able to tell you what wording to put in the calendar invitation and how they handle the difficult sections. I would treat a blank look at that question as a reason to keep looking.

A smaller room needs a different product entirely. Twenty people around tables do not want a keynote delivered at them, they want something that starts a conversation they have been avoiding. The best format is usually a shorter talk followed by facilitated discussion, and it needs a briefing call that is genuinely candid about what is going on.

I ask three things before an offsite. What is the conversation this group has not been having. Who in the room will be difficult and why. And what do you want to be true at half four that is not true at half nine. If the person organising it cannot answer the second one, the day tends to be pleasant and pointless.

• What conversation has this group been avoiding
• Who in the room will be difficult, and why
• What do you want to be true at the end of the day that is not true at the start
• Who briefed the last external speaker, and what changed as a result

If the budget forces a choice, two well matched speakers in the right slots will usually outperform one expensive name badly placed. A recognisable name fills a room and gives the event a headline. A well briefed speaker in the right slot changes what people do afterwards. Decide which of those two you are actually buying.

One caution about big names, having sat in the audience for a few. A well known speaker who has given the same talk two hundred times will deliver you a polished hour that mentions your company once, in the introduction. That is sometimes exactly what a gala dinner needs. It is rarely what a management conference needs.

Ask what happens on the briefing call and what specifically has changed in a talk as a result of one. A speaker who genuinely customises will have examples to hand. A speaker who does not will talk about how flexible they are without ever describing a change they made.

Every keynote Enda O’Doherty delivers includes a call beforehand, and it is not a formality. I have cut whole sections after learning that a company was six weeks past a bereavement, and I have rebuilt an ending around a phrase a HR director used on the phone because it was better than mine.

Send me the agenda, even a rough one, and tell me which slot you are trying to fill and what happens either side of it. I will tell you honestly whether the slot wants me, and if it wants something else, I will say what and usually who.